Inheritance

Part 2. Chapter 69: Blazing Soul

The wisp, Pete, had floated through the walls of the iron fortress, and decided to spend a good part of his night exploring the barren, dry lands of the Crater.

Because he was not mortal, the red light of the Crater did not affect him the way it did mortal creatures. Where it made mortals feel sick and disoriented, it impassioned Pete.

The wisp was confronted by three doppelgangers as he floated beyond the fortress, but he pulsed with a bright light, blinding them and continuing past them. Pete was unafraid of them. It was true that they could kill him, but Pete was confident enough in his abilities not to worry if he were beset by them.

In truth, the wisp was angry. He normally shone with a bright and goodly, golden light, but it had been fading since Them had met up with Taylor in person. How dare she take my Them away... The wisp thought to himself.

Pete sped past acres and acres of dead land—a beacon of yellow light on a brown and red wasteland.

Eventually, the wisp came upon a blackened, leafless tree. Curiously, he eyed it. It's dead, but seeing any kind of tree out here is shocking.

The wisp lowered himself to the ground beneath the tree and sat with his legs crossed.

The wisp wondered how long he should stay away. It had been an hour or two since he left the fortress, but the wisp already found himself feeling listless and diminished due to being so far away from Them's blazing soul.

If he went back now, he was sure Them would continue being dismissive toward him in favor of the fairy, Taylor.

The wisp grabbed a hand-full of dirt, letting it pour through his fingers. I have a lot of time to waste. I want him to squirm.

Pete drew a line in the dirt. The other wisps must be laughing at me.

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Before he had met Them, Pete spent his life in the blissful, blindingly bright mountains where wisps resided. These mountains could not be found by any mortals but waifs, and even then, only waifs who knew how and where to look for them could find them.

Pete was a younger wisp, which, by mortal standards, was not young at all. He had stopped counting long ago, but he thought that he must be around one-thousand-years-old. As a result, he was starting to get dreadfully bored of life. Wisps didn't have much to do other than laze about and recline on the unimaginably soft, white grass that grew on the mountains.

Pete's only window of excitement was when a mortal whose soul resonated with his own got lost--either physically or emotionally--and he had the privilege of guiding them back to the right path. He could see these souls through brightly colored jewels that blipped into existence on the mountains. When Pete held a jewel in his hand, he could gaze through it at the soul on the other side. Some belonged to elves, some to dwarves, some to humans, and some to waifs.

Pete would get a glimpse of the lives these people lived within the jewel. They did not live the life of wisps; they lived lives fraught with sadness and hunger, danger and fear, and...

Passion and love.

Wisps did not have the body parts that mortals did. Pete did not have a pulse, neither did he have a heart, but when he looked upon these mortals, he felt excitement bubbling up from the depths of his soul.

In the mortal realm of Yharos, Pete would appear to these mortals as a glowing ball of light through the powers of the jewels. His consciousness would detach from his body, and his soul would briefly step foot in the mortal world until he had guided mortals to the right path, and then his soul would automatically return to his own body.